


For you the flag is flung

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Poetry, Walt Whitman - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They memorize Walt Whitman to keep their minds off the hollow ache in their hungry bellies or the rattle in Steve's chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For you the flag is flung

Bucky Barnes has always loved history. It was his favorite class in school; he checked out books from the school library to read on his own time, and even after his time at school drew to an end, he kept up on his reading. So he knows a lot about history. He knows about the rise and fall of empires and civilizations. What he knows most about is the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln. He and Steve have had a thing for Abraham Lincoln since they learned about his colorful history of failure. Bucky loves to remind Steve about how many times old Honest Abe got back up after being knocked down whenever Steve is struggling to breathe or has a dizzy spell or has to curl into a tight ball against the ache in his bones signaling a coming rain.

In one book about Abraham Lincoln, Bucky finds Whitman's _O Captain! My Captain!_ He and Steve take turns reading it to one another (Steve can only read for short amounts of time before he gets breathless and his head aches from focusing his eyes on the small print) until they have it memorized, something to keep their minds off the hollow ache in their hungry bellies or the rattle in Steve's chest.

“Sounds like a real hero,” Steve murmurs sleepily one night as they try to sleep through the wind cutting through their thin walls. They've just finished reciting it from memory, because it's the only thing they both have memorized that isn't a dirty limerick or a liturgy. Steve gets embarrassed by the dirty ones and Bucky says liturgies make his backside ache out of muscle memory. “But even he didn't make it.”

Bucky shivers and wraps Steve more tightly in his arms. Steve's barely getting over pneumonia again, and he's in one of his morbid moods. Bucky hates Steve's morbid moods (Steve calls them _realism_ any time Bucky brings it up). They make him scared and angry and paranoid Steve's had some kind of saint visit him in the night telling him his number's coming up soon. (Steve always says that's stupid, no saint would visit him, and Bucky doesn't say anything because he's convinced if a saint's going to visit anyone on Earth, it'd be Steve, even before the Pope.)

“Well, he made it a long time,” Bucky says firmly, which doesn't even entirely make sense because the poem says nothing of how old the captain was and if they're using Abraham Lincoln as their reference point he wasn't that old when some coward blew the back of his head off right in front of his wife. Steve doesn't answer; his breathing is already slow and even and Bucky listens to it for a long time before he falls asleep.

 _O Captain_ leads them to Whitman's other Lincoln poem, _When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd_ , and the first time he reads it, Bucky weeps like a child because he's sat by Steve's bed when he's been getting last rites one time too many (even one time at all is too many) and the despair hits him right in the center of his chest. Steve reads it quietly, only glaring in response to Bucky's offer to read it out loud since it's so long, and when he finishes he frowns for a minute.

“It's pretty sad,” he agrees, rubbing a hand down Bucky's back so Bucky doesn't think his tears are silly. Bucky bites his lip and looks away. Steve doesn't get it. Steve's seen death, of course—he doesn't remember his father at all, but he saw his mother's last breath and looked into the cold face of Bucky's father one last time before they lowered him into the ground.

But the kind of ache the poem is talking about, the pain of losing your friend, your _companion_ , that's not a fear Steve's had. Bucky got the mumps when they were twelve, and he gets a cold every damn winter, but he's never been knocking on death's door, so Steve doesn't get that heart-stopping fear anytime Bucky sniffles. Bucky is equal parts annoyed and glad; annoyed that Steve can be so flippant about words that stab through Bucky harsher than knives, but glad that Steve doesn't have to be worried.

And then Bucky enlists, and the Army won't take Steve, and the country joins the war, and Bucky gets his orders, and then Steve is looking at him with wide, scared eyes, and Bucky thinks, _now you know_ , that morning before he leaves to go to England and then only God knows where. They have to say their goodbyes in their apartment and not at the dock like every other soldier gets to do with his lover because Bucky isn't allowed to love Steve out in the open.

“O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul,” Steve whispers against Bucky's neck. Bucky pulls back, surprised.

“You memorized it?”

“Not all of it.” Steve shrugs, ducking his head in hopes Bucky won't see how distraught he is. “Kept reading it because I could tell it meant something to you. That part stuck with me.” Steve probably only read it twice and remembers most of it, that's how good his memory is. Bucky's chest hurts a little now that Steve gets that fear Bucky's had all along.

Bucky rubs a knuckle over Steve's cheekbone. “I'll be back.” His voice is hollow, because he can't promise it and he's not even confident it's true.

“I'll be there soon,” Steve says firmly. Bucky doesn't comment on that, but finally he has to push out of Steve's embrace and walk to the docks without Steve's dry hand in his and snap off a salute on the shore instead of leaving with a kiss. His eyes are wet, a little, as he turns away from Steve, because Bucky's always cried too easily and it's hard to see Steve standing there in the crowd of parents and siblings and wives and sweethearts, standing with his head down instead of defiantly raising his chin to the challenge because this isn't a challenge he can fight off.

Some people in the crowd start leaving before the ship shoves off but Steve stays the whole time, and Bucky stands at the edge of the deck and watches him get smaller and smaller and he has to grip the railing tight and clench his jaw to hold in a sob and he murmurs to himself,

“Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song. Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.”

“Sorry?” Another soldier near him asks. “Didn't catch that.”

Bucky turns away without a word.

As Bucky lies on Zola's table, he thinks about Steve (when he can think), and he wonders if Steve will think of Whitman, think of _you've fallen cold and dead_ , think of _I'll perfume the grave of him I love_ , when he gets the news about Bucky, if he'll understand Whitman even better than Bucky when that day comes because Bucky's understanding had been fear, had been hypothetical, and Steve's will be applied.

And then Steve is _there_ , all chiseled muscles and strong lungs, and the men call him _Cap_ or _Captain_ and it sends cold dread sliding down Bucky's stomach every time because with every call of Captain he remembers _my captain lies, fallen cold and dead_. He never once calls Steve by his rank; he wouldn't anyway, probably, but especially not when they spent so many nights lying curled up, whispering _O Captain_ so many times.

They're around the fire, trying to rustle up something edible, and the other men are joking and teasing their way through the despair but the base they'd destroyed had had a table with dead men strapped to it and Bucky's got ice in his veins and slight tremors in his muscles, and Steve had gotten pinned down in a room for a full ten minutes before Bucky could come down from his vantage point and pick off some of the HYDRA goons, and Steve's face had been ashen and won't leave Bucky's mind. Bucky is sitting on a log, staring into the fire, barely holding it together enough to breathe. Steve tells Dugan to do something, Bucky doesn't pay attention to what, and Dugan salutes flippantly and says,

“Anything for you, O Captain, My Captain.”

Bucky is on his feet before he knows what's happening, snarling into Dugan's face, “Don't quote that fucking poem.”

“Buck!” Steve throws an arm around his waist and pulls him backward, and Bucky's chest is heaving and he's spitting as he yells.

“Don't you have any fucking idea what happens in that poem? What it's based on? You're a goddamn fool if you think you can say that to Steve!”

Dugan has no idea what the problem is; his bewildered face is fading from vision as Steve drags Bucky away to calm him down. Bucky can't catch his breath and he's cold, he's so cold all the time now, and his teeth are chattering loudly in the quiet of the snowy woods.

“Buck, you gotta breathe, c'mon.” Steve is murmuring nonsense into his hair, holding him tight in arms too big against a chest too broad and Bucky trembles and cries because Steve's body won't betray him now but there's still an enemy with guns that shoot blue electricity and Steve's body can't save him from evaporating in a heap of ash in front of Bucky's eyes. It is, ironically, what happened to Bucky's old captain, and that thought sends him hyperventilating again.

As Bucky falls, a scream tearing from his throat and Steve's horrified face searing into his brain, he thinks _now he'll_ really _know, he'll understand too well_ , and then come the rocks and Bucky doesn't remember thinking anything for a long time. He's not there to see the other Commandos trundling an almost catatonic Steve along, back to the base; he's not there to hear Steve muttering under his breath about _Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands_ ; he's not there to see Jones nodding in understanding because he'd gone to college, he knows what Steve's whispering, or to see Morita and Dugan holding Steve upright as he sways when he has to deliver the news to Phillips.

He's not there when Steve points the nose of the plane downward and closes his eyes and whispers, “O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I don't know wtf this is lmao.


End file.
